I’m sure most of you are aware of the recent tornado that ripped through downtown Atlanta. The following article is about my very close friends, and a three month old puppy, who survived the close brush with death. Here is a quick video clip of the interview, but the article is much more descript.
How residents of the old Cabbagetown cotton mill survivedBy BEN SMITH
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/15/08 P.J. Bullock said it took 10 seconds; Kevin Goolsby said it was 15. But there was no disagreement over what had happened: The old cotton mill had been struck by a tornado.Goolsby was at home in Building H of the renovated, former Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills loft complex in Atlanta’s Cabbagetown neighborhood when the building was hit. When the room started shaking and his started popping, Goolsby said he knew exactly what was happening.
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“I’m from Mississippi and I’ve been through two of these before,” Goolsby said. “That’s what happens in a tornado.”Goolsby said he immediately ran to the bathroom for cover.Bullock was a dinner guest in a top floor loft on the Boulevard side of Building E next door.“We heard a huge breeze blow through,” Bullock said. “My friend got up to close the window but couldn’t.”In a matter of seconds Bullock, his host Lauren Weiss and two other friends would be running be for their lives.“Do you see the windows?” said Bullock as he pointed to the top of the building. “They’re huge. They started cracking and the room started shaking.”Seconds later, Bullock said a wall ripped away, exposing the unit to the open air and the roaring wind. The roof opened up and then crashed on the building’s top floor, prompting a chain reaction collapse of the unit next door and part of Weiss’s and all of the floors below it.“It fell all the way to the basement, “Bullock said.Bullock said he fled down the hallway and dove into an open room while his friends hovered under fallen plywood. When Bullock realized his friends weren’t with him, he ran back to find them.“It was very chaotic,” Bullock said. “When I went back to get everybody, there was no wall, there was no roof, and all I could see was just the city of Atlanta skyline.”Bullock and Weiss said they had to climb over bricks and glass to escape down a stairwell. Weiss wasn’t wearing shoes.“I got cuts on my feet,” Weiss said.They all made it out safely — except, apparently, for “Jackson,” Bullock’s 3-month-old mixed breed German Shepherd puppy. The dog was still missing Saturday afternoon.As firefighters sifted the rubble. Bullock stood silently staring up at the roof. His girlfriend, Mary Pierce Zirkle, who wasn’t there when the twister struck, stood beside him, her eyes glazed with tears.“It was one of those things where you don’t know if you’re going to make it out or not,” Bullock. When asked how he was feeling,” Bullock replied, “I don’t know. … I don’t have a scratch on me.”
Puppy feared dead turns up safe under couch at Cotton Mill LoftsBy CHRISTIAN BOONE, BEN SMITH
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/17/08 P.J. Bullock barely survived Friday night’s tornado. He feared his dog, Jackson, wasn’t so lucky.Sunday afternoon, he and a friend returned to the Cotton Mill Lofts in Cabbagetown to look one last time for his 3-month-old mixed breed German shepherd. He was able to persuade a firefighter to check the apartment where the puppy wasn’t seen.
Mary Pierce Zirkle / Handout |
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“They found him underneath a couch,” said Bullock, who was having dinner in a top-floor loft on the Boulevard side of Building E when the tornado struckThe dog apparently had scampered underneath the furniture just as one of the apartment’s walls was collapsing. That’s where he was discovered Sunday, safely ensconced amid the rubble.“Jackson was OK … completely healthy,” said Bullock, who likewise escaped the storm “without a scratch.”“We heard a huge breeze blow through,” he recalled. “My friend got up to close the window but couldn’t.”Seconds later, a wall ripped away, exposing the unit to the open air and the roaring wind, he said. The roof opened up and then crashed on the building’s top floor, prompting a chain reaction collapse of the unit next door and part of the apartment where Bullock was a guest.“It fell all the way to the basement,” he said.Bullock said he fled down the hallway and dove into an open room while his friends hovered under fallen plywood. When he realized his friends weren’t with him, he ran back to find them.“It was very chaotic,” Bullock said. “When I went back to get everybody, there was no wall, there was no roof, and all I could see was just the city of Atlanta skyline.”
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